Lockwood & Co: The Whispering Skull

26

At Kensal Green Cemetery, the West Gate was open, the little watch-hut empty, and no lights showed as we approached the Anglican chapel through the trees. We were entering the final hour of darkness. Already the stars were paler; soon the horizon would blaze into light somewhere over the eastern docks, and the night’s shadows be driven forth from London. But the birds were not yet singing.

Outside the chapel, the cabins of Sweet Dreams Excavations and Clearance were black and empty, the fire-buckets cold. The mechanical diggers stood motionless, arms bent and bowed like the necks of sleeping herons. It was true, then: Mr Saunders had suspended all activities and left the cemetery to its dead. But Lockwood and I strode swiftly across the abandoned camp, and pattered up the chapel stairs.

The lines of police tape had been torn away. Light gleamed in a razor-thin line beneath the door.

Lockwood held a finger to his lips. He’d been silent and grim-faced throughout the journey, scarcely uttering a word.

Which is more than I could say for my other companion.

‘You’ll be too late,’ a voice hissed in my ear. ‘Cubbins won’t have been able to resist taking a look. Peeped, choked, dead already: that’s my prediction.’

‘You’d better hope not,’ I breathed. ‘Or you know what we’ll do to you.’

Somewhere in the rucksack I carried, I felt the indignant hum of churning plasm.

Since leaving the house, the ghost in the jar had kept up a whispered commentary, alternating wildly between threats, pleas and expressions of false condolence. It was agitated, in other words; my threat to abandon it had left it deeply unsettled. Which didn’t make it any less irritating. I’d have gladly hurled it into a bush, but we didn’t have that option. The ghost knew Bickerstaff. The ghost knew the secrets of the mirror. We might have need of its help right now.

Lockwood glared at me for quiet; he reached for the great metal door handle. I readied myself, squinted in preparation for the transition from dark to light. With a sudden fluid movement, he turned it, pushed. The door squealed; brightness flooded our eyes. We both stepped in.

The interior of the chapel was much as when we’d last seen it on the morning after the theft: the desks of Mr Saunders and Mr Joplin strewn with papers; the gas heaters; the great black catafalque on its metal plate; the pulpit, the altar and its long, shiny rail. All was silent, all was still. There was no one to be found.

I listened for the telltale buzzing of the bone glass, heard nothing.

Lockwood touched the nearest heater. ‘Warm,’ he said. ‘Not hot. He’s been here tonight, but not for a while.’

I was looking at a familiar twisted shape in the near corner, swept aside amid piles of dirty salt and filings. ‘The iron coffin’s still here – look. But Bickerstaff’s body is gone.’

‘My master is near,’ the ghost whispered suddenly. ‘I feel his presence.’

‘Where?’ I demanded. ‘How do we get to him?’

‘How can I tell? It’s so hard in this jar. If you let me out, I’ll sense far more.’

‘Not a chance.’

Lockwood strode across to the wooden door behind the altar rail; he pushed and pulled, but the door remained firm. ‘The padlock’s off,’ he said, ‘and the bolts are open. Someone’s locked it from the inside.’

‘Are we sure he’ll be in the catacombs?’ I said. ‘It’s not the sort of place I’d go.’

‘But that’s just it!’ Lockwood jumped back; he was staring wildly around the room. ‘Remember those illustrations in the Bickerstaff papers? The catacombs are exactly the sort of place where idiots like Joplin do hang out. It’s a place to find stuff – it gives the right grisly ambience. And, crucially, it’s private. You’re not going to be disturbed down there.’ He cursed. ‘Ah, this is a nightmare! How can we get in?’

‘Blind as bats,’ the ghost said. ‘Always looking, never seeing. Even if it’s standing straight ahead of you.’

I gave a snarl, thumping my fist into the side of the rucksack. ‘Quiet, you, or I swear I’ll—’ Then I stopped dead, staring at the big black marble plinth in the middle of the room. The catafalque. The Victorian device for lowering coffins into the catacombs below. I gasped. ‘The catafalque! Didn’t Saunders say it was still working?’

Lockwood slapped his palm against his head. ‘Yes! He did! Of course! Hurry, Luce! Look everywhere! Cupboards, corners, over by the altar . . . There must be a mechanism!’

‘Oh, you think?’ the skull scoffed. ‘Honestly, this is pathetic. It’s like teaching cats to read.’

We rushed back and forth around the chapel, peering into every likely nook and shadow, but the walls were bare, and we could see no lever or button.

‘We’re missing something,’ Lockwood muttered. He turned on his heels, frowning. ‘It must be close.’

‘So we look again! Hurry!’ I opened a small vestry cupboard, threw aside piles of mouldy hymn books and service sheets. No lever there.

‘Hopeless,’ the skull whispered. ‘I bet a five-year-old could figure this out.’

‘Shut up.’

‘We’ve got to find it, Lucy. Heaven knows what Joplin’s doing.’ Lockwood was tracing the far side of the wall, scanning high and low. ‘Ah, we’ve been so dumb! He’s been right in front of us the whole time, and we didn’t give him a moment’s thought. He’s been poking his nose into the case since before we opened the coffin. Barnes even told us that someone at the excavation site must have tipped off the relic-men about the mirror – otherwise they’d never have turned up so fast. Joplin was one of the few people who could have done that, but we never suspected him.’

‘There wasn’t any reason to,’ I protested. ‘Remember how upset he was about the theft? I don’t think he was acting.’

‘No, I don’t either. But it never occurred to us that Joplin might have been genuinely upset, and yet still be guilty. You know what I think happened? He got Jack Carver to steal the mirror – just as Carver had stolen lots of stuff for him before. Saunders said there had been many thefts at his excavations over the years. That was all Joplin, pinching things he fancied. But this time, Carver double-crossed him. He realized the value of the mirror, and took it off to Winkman, who paid him well. Joplin was furious.’

‘Right,’ I said. I was racing along the wall – bare, white, without anywhere to hide a crack or cobweb, let alone a switch of any kind. ‘So furious he stabbed the relic-man with his fancy dagger.’

‘Exactly. Ordinarily, I bet Joplin would be too wimpy to hurt a fly. But if the skull’s correct – if Joplin has been affected by the ghost of Edmund Bickerstaff, and is being driven mad . . .’

‘Yes,’ the skull whispered. ‘That’s what the master does. He takes the weak and feeble-minded and bends them to his will. Like this, for example. Lucy – I order you! Smash my glass prison and set me free! Set me freeeee!’

‘Get lost,’ I said. ‘Lockwood – so do you really think that Joplin went after Carver?’

He was over in the far corner of the chapel, moving fast, speaking faster. ‘He did, and caught up with him when he was on his way to see us. They argued. When Carver revealed he’d sold the glass, Joplin went berserk. He stabbed Carver, who broke free and managed to get to us. Joplin, of course, would have thought he’d lost the glass for ever. How wrong he was. Ever since then we’ve been searching for it, and kindly keeping him informed. And now George has actually brought him the glass, and Joplin’s got his heart’s desire, while we – we can’t find our stupid way down!’

With a cry of frustration Lockwood kicked the wall with a boot. We’d gone round the entire room without success. He was right. We were stymied; there was no way down.

‘What about outside?’ I said. ‘There might be another entrance in the grounds.’

‘I suppose, though how we’ll find it in time, I don’t know. All right,’ Lockwood said. ‘We’ll look. Come on.’

We ran to the doors, opened them – and stopped dead. There on the step, framed against the lightening sky, stood three familiar figures in silver-grey jackets. Bobby Vernon, Kat Godwin, big Ned Shaw: the small, blonde and menacing members of Quill Kipps’s team. Not Kipps himself, though. They froze in the act of reaching for the door-knocker. We gazed at them.

‘Where’s Quill?’ Kat Godwin snapped. ‘What’s going on?’

‘What have you done with him?’ Ned Shaw loomed in close. ‘No nonsense today, Lockwood. Speak up right now.’

Lockwood shook his head. ‘Sorry, we haven’t got time for this. It’s an emergency. We think George is in trouble.’

Kat Godwin’s jaw clenched; there was doubt as well as hostility in her eyes. She spoke abruptly. ‘We think Kipps is too.’

‘He called us an hour ago,’ Bobby Vernon piped up, ‘to say he’d been following your friend Cubbins. He’d seen him go into the cemetery with someone. Told us to join him here. We’ve been looking everywhere, but there’s no sign of him.’

‘Still spying on us, was he?’ I sneered. ‘Shame.’

‘Better than skulking around with criminals like you seem to be doing,’ Godwin spat.

‘All that’s irrelevant now,’ Lockwood said. ‘If Kipps is with George, they’re both at risk. Kat, Bobby, Ned: we need your help, and you need ours, so let’s get on with it.’ He spoke calmly and authoritatively; and though I saw Ned Shaw’s fingers twitch, none of them challenged him. ‘We think they’re in the catacombs under the chapel,’ Lockwood went on. ‘The access doors are locked, and we need to get down. Bobby, you’d know this sort of thing. Victorian catafalques, used for lowering bodies beneath the church. How were they operated? From above, from below?’

‘From above,’ Vernon said. ‘The minister lowered the coffin during the service.’

‘OK, so there must be a lever. We were right, Luce. So where—’ He broke off, staring out across the twilit graveyard. ‘Kat, Ned – did you bring anyone else with you?’

‘No,’ Ned Shaw scowled. ‘Why?’

Lockwood took a deep breath. ‘Because,’ he said slowly, ‘it looks like we’ve got company.’

His eyes were better than mine; I hadn’t noticed the little movements out among the gravestones, the swift dark shapes flitting up the grassy aisles. They converged upon the excavation camp, and now passed out into the greyly open space between the sheds and diggers. A group of men, purposeful and silent; men used to being out at night. They carried sticks and cudgels in their hands.

‘Hey, this is exciting,’ the skull’s voice whispered in my ear. ‘I’m so enjoying this night out. Now I get to see you all killed. We must do this more often.’

‘Not friends of yours, then, Lockwood?’ Kat Godwin said.

‘Acquaintances, perhaps . . .’ He looked sidelong at me. ‘Lucy, I think these fellows come from Winkman. That one on the end was at the auction, I’m almost sure. Lord knows how they’ve followed us, but I need you to do something for me now without arguing.’

‘OK.’

‘Go back into the chapel, find the lever, go down and get George. I’ll follow as soon as I can.’

‘Yes, but Lockwood—’

‘Without arguing would be nice.’

When he uses that tone, arguing with Lockwood isn’t an option. I stepped backwards into the chapel. The first men had reached the bottom of the steps. Between them they possessed a fair combination of features you wouldn’t want to see approaching on a dark night: bald heads and broken noses, bared teeth and low-slung brows . . . The clubs they held weren’t too appealing, either.

‘What do we do?’ Bobby Vernon stammered.

‘Right now, Bobby,’ Lockwood said, ‘I think you need to draw your sword.’ He glanced back at me over his shoulder. ‘Lucy – go!’

Men came rushing up the steps; I slammed the door. From outside came the sound of ringing steel, thuds and crashing. Someone screamed.

I ran into the centre of the chapel, stood by the marble catafalque. What had Vernon said? The minister would lower it down. OK, so where would the minister have been standing? Where on earth would he be?

‘Ooh, so tough,’ the whispering voice said. ‘Shows how often you go to church.’

And then, all at once, I knew. The pulpit. The plain wooden pulpit, its top carved in the shape of an opened book, standing quiet and forgotten a few feet from the catafalque. I strode across to it, trying to ignore the noises from outside. I stepped up onto its foot-rest, looked down, and saw the hidden shelf cut into the wood just below the top.

There on the shelf: the simple metal switch.

I pressed it. At first I thought it had done nothing; then, smoothly and almost silently – there was only the faintest hum – the catafalque began to sink. The metal plate it rested on was descending through the floor. I jumped down from the pulpit, ran across and sprang onto the top of the black stone.

Outside the chapel, something heavy thudded against the doors. I did not look up. I drew my rapier and stood ready, feet apart and breathing steadily. Past flagstones, away from light and into darkness, I was carried down into the earth.

‘Don’t be frightened.’ From the rucksack, a wicked whispering brushed my ear. ‘You’re not alone. You’ve still got me.’

A shaft of brick had opened out into realms of solid space, and still I was going down. I could feel the gap around me, the sudden suck and cling of cold, dry air. Yet I could see nothing. I knew that I was spot-lit in a column of light that deadened my senses and made me vulnerable. Anything could be waiting there, close by, and I would not know it until I landed right beside them. My hackles rose; all my instincts told me I needed to get away. The feeling of danger overwhelmed me. I tensed, ready to jump—

And the mechanism stopped.

With a hop and a scramble I was off the catafalque and out of that column of light. Then I forced myself to halt. I went very still; I stood in the dark and listened to the racing of my heart and, beyond that, to the silence of this place.

But it was not silent, at least not to my inner senses. From unknown distances came little sounds – soft rustlings and sighings, faint peals of laughter that ended in a sudden sob. I heard whispering too, in cut-off snatches; and somewhere, most horribly, the stupid, repetitive clicking of somebody’s wet tongue.

None of it came from mortal throats.

I was in the realm of the dead.

The psychic silence was also broken, more obviously, by a cheery whistling sound from the ghost-jar in my rucksack. Occasionally it stopped, but only to start up a banal and tuneless hum.

‘Will you pack that in?’ I said. ‘I need to listen.’

‘Why? I’m happy. This is my kind of place.’

‘It’s a place you’ll stay for ever, if you don’t co-operate with me,’ I snarled. ‘I’ll brick you up behind a wall.’

The whistling abruptly ceased.

Always, when you’re alone and vulnerable, emotions seek to undermine you. Mine went haywire now. I thought of Lockwood, fighting for his life upstairs. I thought of George – and the haunted, yearning expression on his face after glancing at the mirror five nights before. I thought about how easily everything I cared about could be destroyed. I thought of the emptiness of my work-belt. I thought of Edmund Bickerstaff’s terrible Spectre rising high against the moon . . .

I compressed those emotions. I boxed them in, and stored them in a cubby-hole in the attic of my mind. Time enough to open that box later. Right now I had to stay alert – and stay alive.

The ground was rough underfoot: I sensed brickwork, worn and uneven, loose stones and pebbles, and untold years of dust. On all sides, soft, dry coldness stretched away. I could still see nothing at all. Around the shaft of light, everything was so black I might have been in a narrow corridor or a massive void; there was no way of telling. It seemed inconceivable that anyone would deliberately come down here.

Then I caught the faintest whirring, the sound of buzzing flies.

Yes. The bone mirror. It was somewhere close.

Reluctantly – because electric light hinders your Talent, and also draws the attention of any watching eyes – I turned my pen-torch on, swivelling it to its lowest, haziest beam. I swept it up and round me in a slow, smooth arc, taking in my surroundings. There was the catafalque, resting on an exposed mechanism of giant metal levers, black and bent like insect legs. It sat in the centre of a wide passage – its vaulted ceiling high, its floor strewn with debris. The walls – of stone and brick – were subdivided into shelves in many rows, and on most of these a lead coffin stood, pushed into its cavity to await eternity. Some shelves had been bricked up, some were empty; others were full of stones and rubble. Every twenty paces, side-passages cut across the aisle.

Everything was laced with a coating of thin grey dust. I thought of Joplin’s hair.

Turning the torch off, I used my memory to advance in darkness, watching and listening all the time, trying to gauge the location of the mirror’s buzzing. It wasn’t easy, particularly since the ghost in the jar had stirred again.

‘Can you feel them?’ its voice said. ‘The others. They’re all around you.’

‘Will you be quiet?’

‘They hear your footsteps. They hear the frantic beating of your heart.’

‘That’s it. You’re going in one of these shelves, soon as I find George.’

Silence. I adjusted the straps on the rucksack savagely and tiptoed on.

As I drew level with the first cross-passage, I heard a shout echoing through the dark. The sound was distorted, bouncing brokenly between the walls. Was it George? Kipps? Joplin? Was it a living voice at all? I couldn’t tell. But I guessed it came from somewhere to the right. Placing my hand on the bricks to guide me, I set off that way.

Instants later my hand touched something cold and smooth. I jumped back, switched on the torch: it was a dome of glass, placed on the shelf beside its coffin. Beneath the smudged dust where my fingers had passed I saw a display of dried white lilies. For a moment I wondered how long they’d sat there in the dark, these memorial flowers, in perpetual bloom. Then I turned off the torch, went on again.

The passage was long and narrow, and itself crisscrossed with other, nearly identical side-routes, all lined with coffins. I stopped at each intersection, then continued on. As much as possible I went in darkness, hoping to see Visitors as easily as they saw me.

Because Visitors were there.

Once, at an unknown distance down a passage to the left, I saw a faintly glowing form. It was a young man, wearing a suit with a high stiff collar. He stood motionless, with his back to me, one of his shoulders much higher than the other. For some reason I was very glad that he did not turn round.

From down another aisle came an urgent tapping. When I looked, I saw one of the lowest shelves aglow with other-light, the tapping coming most distinctly from its very small lead coffin.

‘This is jolly,’ the skull said. ‘But these wisps are nothing. My master is here too.’

‘Up ahead?’

‘Oh, yes, I think you’re getting closer.’ It chuckled softly. ‘Remember that shout just now? What’s the betting that was Cubbins looking in the bone glass?’

With difficulty, I swallowed my rage. If the ghost was talkative, perhaps it could give me information. ‘Tell me about the mirror,’ I said. ‘How many bones did Bickerstaff use to make it? How many ghosts did it take?’

‘Seven bones and seven spirits, if I recall.’

‘What do you see if you look in the glass?’

‘Oh, I took care never to do that.’

‘What about Bickerstaff? Did he ever look himself?’

‘He may have been mad,’ the ghost said simply, ‘but he wasn’t stupid. Of course he didn’t. The risks were too great. Tell me, don’t you think Cubbins may be busy dying? Aren’t you wasting time?’

Hurrying on, I came at last to what seemed to be an outer most aisle of the catacomb, onto which all the side-passages opened. And now another burst of noise sounded up ahead: angry voices, cries of pain. I speeded up, stumbling on the uneven ground. My boot caught on a loose brick. I tripped, reached out to correct myself, and my hand knocked a piece of stone or mortar from the shelf alongside. It fell, clinked and clattered briefly in the darkness. I stood motionless, listening.

‘It’s all right. No one heard,’ the ghost said. It left a dramatic pause. ‘Or DID they . . .?’

All seemed still, except for the painful thudding of my pulse. I continued, going slowly. Soon the passage began to bend round to the right, and here I saw flickering lantern-light stretching across the bricks, picking out the blackened pockmarks of the empty shelves. The noise of the mirror was louder now, and it was very cold – the temperature dropped lower with each step.

‘Careful,’ the skull whispered. ‘Careful . . . Bickerstaff is near.’

Crouching low, pressing close to the wall, I slipped near the edge of the light and peeped round the corner of the passage. After the darkness, the faint glow blinded me. It took my eyes a few moments to adjust. Then they did, and I saw what was in the room.

My legs felt weak. I supported myself against the wall.

‘Oh, George,’ I breathed. ‘Oh, no.’